Time to turn on the switch with Switch Me for Android

Do you often feel uneasy handing over your smartphone or tablet to someone fearing that they might peek into your personal data or conversations or your important emails ? Not anymore thanks to Switch Me, a new app which lets you create multiple user accounts each with its own set of application, data and settings just like on a PC.

Switch Me works by storing all applications and data as a file in the memory which is protected of course. Each profile that you create will have its own file created by Switch Me, when you log into an account its particular file with all its applications and data is loaded enabling you to have multiple unique installations on a single device. However to do all this Switch Me requires root access, which may turn into a strong reason for many to get their device rooted (to be done at the user’s own risk).

You may create as many profiles as the memory is capable of holding. Any profile on the device can be given elevated-privelage administrator rights. These accounts have the ability to wipe all profiles from the device, or delete individual profiles. An administrator however can not switch to other password-protected accounts, only remove them or grant them administrator permissions.

Once you have granted admin rights to a profile, the owner of that profile will have the same privilages as you. You can revoke these rights from the same menu in security settings.

The app is free if you wish to have no more than two installations or user profiles, if you require anything more than that the app will allow you to do so after you purchase an unlock key which will cost you $1.98 and the password protection feature is supported only under paid version of the app.

If you are still wondering how this app might benefit you here are few scenarios suggested by the developer,

Privacy – the most obvious benefit is that you can securely share one device among multiple users, which gives you privacy and peace of mind.

Testing – if you are a developer, you can use profiles as clean sandboxes to test your applications and their interaction with the system.

Gaming – with multiple installations of Android on a single device, you can now play online MMOs as different characters.

Speed – the games your kids play slow down your tablet, but with SwitchMe you can easily create profiles in without games or messengers.

Battery life – when the battery is low but there are important emails or documents to edit later, switch to a profile which only contains these essentials.

These of course are only suggestions as to what Switch Me has to offer, and besides these there are plenty of other uses of this as app as well so all the daredevils out there who like playing with their Androids (rooting) can get their gears ready and start trying out this amazing app.